Rear-view mirror arrangements for motor vehicles have a reflective surface that enables the traffic at the rear to be observed. The rear-view mirror arrangements are usually embodied such that they are additionally dimmable. During travel in darkness, this prevents dazzle arising from vehicles following behind. In the case of automatically dimmable rear-view mirror arrangements, light sensors arranged in the mirror housing measure or detect the difference in brightness between automobile front zone and rear traffic area. The measurement values are then forwarded to evaluation and control electronics and the reflectivity of the mirror arrangement is correspondingly varied. Both electrochromic rear-view mirror arrangements composed of an electrochromic material and rear-view mirror arrangements which comprise a liquid crystal layer are known in this case. In both systems, the reflectivity is variable when an electric field is applied.
The so-called electrochromic (EC) rear-view mirror arrangements have the disadvantage that this technology has a high current consumption, and that the variation of the reflectivity is very slow.
However, the known rear-view mirror arrangements comprising a liquid crystal layer (LC) also have some disadvantages. Both the known EC mirror arrangements and the previously known LC mirror arrangements substantially consist of a transparent glass pane facing the viewing side, a so-called EC and LC cell, respectively, situated behind the latter, and a lower terminating glass layer provided with a reflective coating. During production, in this case, the two glass layers have to be aligned and arranged exactly parallel to and spaced apart from one another. The manufacturing costs are very high particularly in the embodiment of rear-view mirror arrangements having a curved surface configuration. In this case, the glasses are embodied in a correspondingly curved fashion by bending, wherein two glasses have to match one another exactly with regard to their curvature. If the glasses arranged parallel to and spaced apart from one another deviate from one another with regard to their curvature, undesirable double images occur during the use of the rear-view mirror arrangement. The production and selection of the glass panes matching one another with regard to their curvature is therefore complex and expensive.
An LC mirror arrangement having the basic construction described above is known for example from German Patent Publication No. DE 10 2009 020 402 A1 and German Patent Publication No. DE 196 31 409 A1.